Hazy Titan and little Dione pass in front of Saturn’s ringsNASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute By John Wenz Peculiar crystals could be abundant on Saturn’s largest moon, Titan, potentially creating environments where microbes could live. Morgan Cable at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, and her colleagues simulated Titan’s methane rain and ethane flooding, and found that a salt-like compound formed quickly and stuck around, even after being repeatedly washed over. This suggests that the chemical slurry on the surface could create a “co-crystal”. But rather than salt composed of sodium…

The menacing Marvel antagonist, played on screen by Josh Brolin, has been revealed to have been given a different moniker at birth by his mother Sui-San. CBR.com reports that new comic Thanos #14 gives away his initial name as Dione. In Greek mythology, Dione is often depicted as the mother of the God of love, Aphrodite – so not quite the horrifying global threat we’re used to. The news has been met with surprise on Twitter, with one person saying: “I refuse to accept that Thanos’ name is Dione.” Someone…

How did Dione get those marks?NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute By Adam Mann Looking like claw marks from some giant space bird, peculiar parallel tracks on Saturn’s moons Dione and Rhea have researchers baffled. “I feel like I’m going crazy trying to come up with an explanation,” says Emily Martin, a planetary scientist at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington D.C., who presented her team’s work at a meeting of the 2017 American Geophysical Union in New Orleans, Louisiana, on 11 December. Previous observers have spotted a few of these…